Palin Outshines McCain

Elections in the U.S.

Governor is Main Attraction at Convention

Palin Outshines McCain

A new Republican star is born. Sarah Palin, McCain’s number two, electrifies the convention and eclipses the rumors.

Tony Jenkins, sent to Saint Paul, Minneapolis

0:01 Saturday, September 6th, 2008

Towards the end of the convention, as balloons and confetti rained from the ceiling and the Republican delegates made a brief effort to dance with some form of enthusiasm to compensate for a lackluster speech from their presidential candidate, Lukus Collins was brutally honest: “Thank God we have Palin!.” He screamed over the noise from the band. “That speech was really bad.”

To be fair, Collins, a delegate from Oklahoma, supported another Republican candidate – Ron Paul. He believes Republicans “have become fascists, just like the Nazis before World War II. We’ve shredded up our Constitution. We have to return to our old ideals. But all that McCain offered was war, war and more war. I’m going to abstain from voting on November 4th.”

In fact, war was the theme that ran through the entire convention. Videos of war and terrorist attacks filled up the stage background. McCain’s opening phrase was “In my life, no success has come without a good fight.” In his closing remarks he repeatedly implored: “Fight with me. Fight with me!” He invoked his first memory of his father parting for war after Pearl Harbor. He spoke movingly about his service for the country and the time that he spent as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. When speaking of Russia he warned that “we can’t turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people.”

The Hardness of the Republicans

McCain spoke about the relationship between the Republican and Democratic parties in a conciliatory tone: “Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans…” However, during the convention there was a different tone. At the beginning George W. Bush referred to the “angry left” while the rest of the speakers attacked the “liberal elite”, the “liberal media”, and “the cosmopolitans”, referring to the inhabitants of cities and, by implication, the ethnic minorities living there. More than 90% of the Republican delegates were white.

Although the Democrats spoke of investing in the future, in alternative energies, in high-speed trains and green technology, Palin and the new generation of Republican leaders that she represents still don’t believe in evolution, don’t accept abortion even in the case of rape or incest and also don’t accept stem-cell research.

McCain and the other Republican speakers almost didn’t speak about the health care crisis that has left close to 100 million Americans with either insufficient or no health insurance coverage.

Bush Forgotten

McCain duly began his speech saying: “I’m grateful to the President for leading us in those dark days following the worst attack on American soil in our history.” But he didn’t mention Bush by name nor did any other speaker. The truth is that parts of the speech could have even been uttered by a Democrat: “And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd: change is coming.”

Not even once were the Republicans able to fill up the sports arena where the convention took place. In the surrounding streets the only energy came from protesters that were confronted by an aggressive police operation. It could be that the choice of Palin for the vice-presidency helps McCain to gather the sufficient number of women and working-class conservative voters to lead him to victory, but in the discouraging atmosphere of the Xcel Center on Saturday night, it was difficult not to sense that the Republicans have arrived at the end of an era. McCain and Palin could be the right formula for a new beginning.

The new creature of American Politics

Sarah Palin is, as she herself confesses, “a pit-bull in lipstick.” It was at 18 when she first demonstrated this quality. As captain of her high school basketball team in Wasilla, which won the state championship, she made a vital shot in the last moments at the end of the game in spite of playing with a fractured heel. It was then that she earned the nickname of Sarah Barracuda.

Anne Kilkenny, a neighbour of Palin’s in Wasilla that has known her for 16 years, told Expresso in a telephone interview that Palin is one of the most stubborn women that she has ever met: “If she decides on something, she is absolutely unwavering. Her father, who used to teach my son, said the same thing about his daughter: she is unwavering.”

Kilkenny, who knows Sarah and her parents on a first-name basis, says: “I know her very well. I’m not interested in destroying her political career, I only want to be a good citizen and inform people about who she is. She is determinate, persistent, ambitious, energetic and hard-working. I would say that she is courageous and has determination. If those things are necessary for the White House, she has them. I’ve never seen her crack. However, I would never vote for her for two reasons: she has a paper-thin resume – I don’t think that she’s prepared to be president. And I don’t agree with her philosophically. She’s socially conservative. She wants to prohibit abortion, teach creationism in school, she’s in favor of gun possession and she wants to exercise censorship of books in libraries.”

Kilkenny says that Palin “is like the most popular girl in high school, which isn’t necessarily a good thing: she’s a star and everybody wants to be in close orbit.”

Three in the morning

Her father used to wake her up at 3:00 a.m. to go fish for salmon, hunt moose and run 10 kilometers. It was this athletic practice, along with her beauty, that gave her the confidence that she exhibits. She was also president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and led the group in prayer.

She continues to like hunting big game, knows how to skin moose and make hamburgers out of them, has ran a marathon and given birth to five children, including little Trig, born five months ago with Down syndrome. She hid her pregnancy from the majority of her family members and friends until the sixth month. She was in Texas when her water broke and, refusing to give birth there, she boarded a plane for Alaska without informing the flight crew that she was in labor nor showing any sign of pain. She gave birth after almost twenty-four hours of travel.

She’s an evangelical Christian. She believes that the American invasion of Iraq was ordained by God and that the theory of creationism should be taught in school instead of evolution.

In 2003 she was appointed to the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission. She quit in 2004 and filed a complaint due to the lack of ethics of her Republican colleagues on the board of directors. It was this gesture that brought her fame and allowed her to run as a candidate for governor in 2006 as a reformer and defender of “clean government.”

Rumors about Palin

– She committed adultery according to the tabloid ‘National Enquirer’

– She is under investigation by a bipartisan commission for abuse of power

– She tricked everyone into thinking Trig, a 5-month-old baby, is her son – the real mother may be her seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol

– She tried to fire a librarian for refusing to pull from the public library books deemed “inappropriate”

– Palin is a fundamentalist Christian who considers that the Iraq War is a part of “God’s plan”

Biography

1964 – Born in Sandpoint, Idaho. Moves to Alaska

1984 – Gets 2nd place in the Miss Alaska pageant

1987 – Graduates with a degree in Journalism from the University of Idaho

1988 – Becomes news anchor

1988 – Elopes with her fiancée who she dated since school days

1992 – Elected to the city council of Wasilla

1996 – Elected Mayor

2006 – Elected governor of Alaska – the first woman to occupy the position

Will she be able to measure up to the challenge?

Nine Vice Presidents have occupied the Oval Office following the death or resignation of a President; three after World War II. John McCain is 72-years-old and has already had three melanoma operations. It’s possible that Sarah Palin could replace him. We asked the prominent Republican senator Trent Lott if she would be up to the challenge.

“Governor Sarah Palin has proved that she has ambition, strength and intelligence to reach a major position in national politics. With the speech that she gave, she proved she has courage, personality and the leadership skills to occupy this position. One of our most successful Presidents was a Democrat from a small town, Harry Truman, who was forced to take the position after the death of FDR – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What experience did he have? He managed an outfitter. Of course she’s up to the challenge.”

Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who became President when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, had no experience except as a politician. However, he had one of the most successful legislatures in American history.

Blogs: the triumph of rumor over fact

Unknown to the majority of delegates, close to the ceiling of the Xcel Center sat the Blogger Wing. The McCain campaign conceded press credentials to more than 100 bloggers. Last weekend there were even more bloggers registered at the convention for the Democrats. It’s a sign of how the “new media” is taking over the old. We spoke with Sean Quinn, co-founder of the popular political blog fivethirtyeight.com. “Is the bloggosphere a jungle? You can bet it is. But it also works. Last week it was the blog, ‘The Daily Kos’, that broke the case of pregnancies in the Palin family.”

The story, as told at the beginning, was completely false, but it forced the McCain campaign to immediately react and reveal a different truth, that could have an impact on this election. The traditional media was too afraid to run the story, but the bloggosphere doesn’t have such scruples.”

“I have great sympathy for you guys” continued Quinn. “Almost 3500 journalists and media operators lost their jobs in the last 6 months this year.”